Monday, February 21, 2011

Bakerella Cake Balls and an Epic FAIL

My son told me the other day that the word "epic" has been talked about being removed from the dictionary because it is an overused word. What?! You can't remove a word because it's overused. Isn't that a form of flattery?

Well, the word epic describes what I did this weekend.

I made, for the first time, Bakerella's famous cake balls found here. I'd been wanting to try them for some time. I have seen them all over the internet and blog world. So, if everyone's making them, they can't be too hard, right? Hmmm...

Well, I followed directions to the letter and they "the cake balls" turned out just fine. The problem was when I got to the dipping them in chocolate/almond bark part.

This turned out to be quite messy and difficult. I don't have a double boiler so I "made" one with a bowl sitting on the edge of a small saucepan filled with boiling water. While it worked, I got multiple steam burns. Owww!

Okay...back to the epic fail part. I bought a package of vanilla candy melt. According to everyone's posted info., one package should sufficiently cover 30 cake balls. Well, I guess I rolled mine too small because I ended up with 51 cake balls!! Needless to say, I ran out of vanilla candy melt. No worries, I thought. I'll just melt some milk chocolate chips. I only had a 1/2 bag of those, so, of course, I ran out. ((sigh)) I found a couple of small bars of vanilla candy melt in my baking cabinet. When I melted it, it still didn't look like enough. So...my creative mind thought,"hey! I have some left over glace' in the fridge from my valentine shortbread and fancy sugar cookies." I scraped up a spoonful of the red glace' and added it to the melted vanilla candy melt. Oh my. Do NOT do this. I cannot stress enough here! It was one hot mess. Whatever chemical reaction happened, ruined the candy melt. It got very dry, first, which I am sure was from the powdered sugar in the glace' and then Ms. Brilliant, here, added a dab of water. What happened? It all wadded up together, after turning a pretty shade of pink (which I liked, by the way) and separated leaving it a wad in quite a bit of watered down glace.' I almost took a picture of it, but it was too sad! There would be no dipping with this mess! It clumped together like wax! What was I thinking?!
I ended up putting the last 8 naked cake balls in a ziplock and freezing them and tossing the pink mess in the trash. Lord!

I will post a pic of the cake balls tomorrow. They actually turned out alright. Not as pretty as Bakerella's but, hey, she's done it longer than I have! I had visions of pretty, smooth cake balls. That did not happen. My candy melt ones look like little tiny scoops of ice cream. Not too bad, but not what I was going for. Not quite sure why they were lumpy. I stirred the stuff repeatedly. I have steam burns on my fingers to prove it! The kids said they tasted great. I tried one. Not my cup of tea. I am not a raw dough kinda person. I know these aren't raw dough but they reminded me of it, texture wise, and I just couldn't eat them.

Have you ever tried to make these? Any words of advice on the dipping part? What worked for you?

4 comments:

Thank you so much for all of your sweet comments at Thrifty Decorating! :) They are so encouragin! I'm hoping to get a linky going soon and I'd love for you to link some of your recipes! They all look so good!

Hi Karen.I've made them before but they were too sweet for me. I used the candy melt and it was a huge mess trying to coat them with a fork but they turned out okay. I had more success making cake pops since I had a stick to dip it it with. The one thing I learned is to let the balls freeze a bit longer than she recommended since I don't work as quickly as she does.

If I ever make them again, I'll have to scale back the amount of frosting to cake used. Mine were so sweet they would give you a cavity if you looked at it sideways.

Who am I?

Hi! I'm Karen!! I am a 40-something mom of two, grandma, and wife to a wonderful husband. I am from Northern Indiana. I grew up on a large farm with roaming fields of soybean and corn. Through my teenage years, I rode horses in local shows and rodeos, enjoyed 4-H, raised chickens, and climbed in the hay loft in the barn. I enjoy crafting, baking, cooking, decorating my home, working out in the yard, and party-planning.